Sony said Tuesday it has rejected a U.S. hedge fund's proposal to spin off part of its profitable entertainment arm, but the billionaire behind the offer vowed to continue efforts to overhaul the struggling Japanese electronics giant.

Daniel Loeb, who says his U.S. hedge fund Third Point has amassed the largest stake in Sony, had called on Sony executives to list up to 20 percent of the entertainment unit, which includes a major music label and a Hollywood movie studio.

The French economy, bumping along in recession, is likely to grow by 0.1 percent in the third quarter of the year, the Bank of France said on Wednesday.

This is better than forecast at the end of June by the national statistics institute INSEE which foresaw zero growth in the third quarter.

By Giza's Great Pyramids, souvenir vendors wait restlessly in the shade, watching for the handful of tourists who still make their way down the empty street to the once-bustling landmark.

The 2011 revolution that toppled dictator Hosni Mubarak dealt a severe blow to the country's tourist industry, once a mainstay of Egypt's economy.

The Pentagon has notified the U.S. Congress of $2.7 billion in possible new sales to Iraq of air defense and communications systems.

The latest contracts would raise to nearly $5 billion the value of a series of U.S arms sales to Iraq that have been sent to Congress over the past two weeks.

Mothers with a certain gene got meaner when the economy took a dive in 2007-2009, whether or not their own purses were shorter on cash, U.S. researchers said Monday.

The study in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences suggests that environment can have a major impact on behavior, particularly when genetic variations are taken into account.

The Washington Post, the legendary newspaper that broke the Watergate scandal, is being sold to Amazon founder Jeff Bezos as it seeks to survive the onslaught of the Internet.

Donald Graham, grandson of Eugene Meyer, who bought the Post during the Great Depression in 1933, stunned the U.S. media industry on Monday, announcing the sale of the storied title to Bezos for $250 million.

Production has resumed from Libya's western oilfields but protests at the main shipping terminals are still blocking exports from the central coast, Petroleum Minister Abdelbari al-Aroussi said on Monday.

Aroussi said that output was now running at 700,000 barrels per day, up from the low of 330,000 bpd recorded at the height of the protests last week but still far short of the pre-protest average of 1.42 million bpd.

Global banking giant HSBC announced on Monday a 22-percent rise in half-year net profits on lower costs and falling bad-debt charges, while noting that slower Chinese growth was impacting its main market Asia.

Profit after tax jumped to $10.28 billion (7.73 billion euros) in the six months to the end of June compared with the first half of 2012, the British bank and Europe's biggest said in an earnings statement.

The eurozone recession seems to be fading out at last, with key growth indicators giving a surprisingly strong showing, economics experts said on Monday.

A key leading indicator of activity, the Markit Eurozone Composite Purchasing Managers Index for July switched to give a growth reading for the first time for 18 months.

South Korea's Hyundai Heavy Industries (HHI) said Monday it had won a $3.3 billion order to build a steam power plant in Saudi Arabia.

Under the deal signed on Sunday with Saudi Electricity Co., Hyundai will complete the massive facility with a production capacity of 2,640 megawatts by 2017, the company said in a statement.